


consolation prize

by MathildaHilda



Series: consolation prize [1]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018), The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Non-Canonical Character Death, Past Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-20 11:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17621903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: Excerpt from Ch. 4;"Her eyes had been so wide and her dress so blue and she’d looked so sad when she saw him that first time he visited after Nell and Dad, as if though she knew what he didn’t in those moments before the porchlight flashed twice and his mother smiled and this seemed naught but a distant dream.(And perhaps, she did.)"***Steve goes to the house seven times.





	1. and know the place for the first time

**Author's Note:**

> I mean... I don't WANT to be mean to Steve, but he kind of makes it easy sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter title: ultimate 
> 
> Current title from: “We shall not cease from exploration  
> And the end of all our exploring  
> Will be to arrive where we started  
> And know the place for the first time.  
> Through the unknown, remembered gate  
> When the last of earth left to discover  
> Is that which was the beginning;  
> At the source of the longest river  
> The voice of the hidden waterfall  
> And the children in the apple-tree  
> Not known, because not looked for  
> But heard, half-heard, in the stillness  
> Between two waves of the sea.”  
> \- T.S. Eliot

Leigh’s home alone with Ellie tucked safely against her chest when he parks the car and looks up at the House. His heart isn’t pounding like a frightened bird and it isn’t dropped to the soles of his feet in attempts to escape. It rests where it should, beating calmly and steadily, as if it knew, all along, that this was what it had been preparing itself for.

It’s dark and foreboding, the same as it’s always been, and he hears it faintly, because he’s finally learned how to listen.

(He’s always known how to see, but the prospect is so much more different now.)

He walks on weed grown gravel and wraps his fingers around the rusty door handle, pushes it down just like all those times before, and closes his eyes, because he doesn’t  _want_ to see what’s on the other side. He  _knows_ what’s on the other side.

That should be enough.

Her voice is soft, the same as always and the same as he remembers, and it wraps him in a sense of security he never really felt after that night. There’s a second voice, fainter and filled with grief rather than pride, and it counts up and down and in all the wrong directions, because  _time_ is wrong and the  _House_ is wrong, and that should’ve been enough.

He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t remove his glasses and instead threads his fingers through the air, because maybe, just maybe, he can feel something right about the place.

Luke called him delusional the first time and asked him if he was high, but something had changed the third time when he was here after that visit to the woman with a child in her garden. His fingers weave patterns in the air, but it doesn’t change. Doesn’t warp into something more solid than the dust floating around and the foul hint of mold.

 

(The House should’ve smelled like death, just like it had the second time, after Nell and before Dad and like all those times after, but it doesn’t.

The House just smells like home.)

 

His fingers stop when the air changes. There’s no more wind blowing, and it stops as if it was blocked by something, but he knows this House and knows there’s nothing there. He’s too far from the staircase and he and Mr. Dudley moved whatever had been left behind. But Mr. Dudley’s dead now.

The House is all that’s left.

Slender fingers grasp his, small and cold and it takes both hands for the fingers to fully wrap around his hand. It tugs and holds on, refusing him further access, but the voice that follows is counting and crying.

“You don’t have to count.” He whispers and so it stops, a breath hitches in a throat and small arms wrap around his waist. He hugs Nell tightly as the child she is, and her tears soak through his shirt. She stopped talking, but she didn’t stop counting.

 _Tap, tap, tap._ At the back of his jacket, three taps followed by four more and he knows, he’s always known, that she’s afraid.

He’s not his brother. He can’t make her better. But he can make her less alone.

 _“Go.”_ She whispers, older and sadder, and he shakes his head where his chin rests on top of hers. She pushes, but he stays and holds on and it doesn’t make it any easier.  _“Not here. Not now.”_ She whispers, pushes away and cups his face in her hands. The motion makes him want to see, but she presses her palms over his eyes and so all he sees is darkness.

Her tapping doesn’t stop, pressing lightly into his forehead where she has her hands over his eyes and it almost makes him laugh, because Nell would always be the child of them.

“Leigh doesn’t know.” He whispers, bends his head down as if to look, but she doesn’t move her hands.  _“You shouldn’t lie.”_ She says, voice strained when she tries to speak through a broken windpipe. “I know. But I had to.”

 _“No.”_ She’s shaking her head, he knows, because she presses herself against his chest again, neck poking into his ribs where it’s bent wrong. “Yes, Nellie.” He says and she almost moves her hands, but seeing her makes it more real, and she desperately wants this to be a dream for the both of them.

He doesn’t, so he clasps her wrists gently, tugging her away but all it does is bring a broken whimper past her lips and once he moves, his sister is gone and replaced with the coldness of a House that once was home.

 

(There was one story in his plethora of books that he hadn’t written from the end or midway through. There was one story, one of many, that he hadn’t had to think too much about where to place what and what to write and what to say.

All he had had to do, the hardest part, was apologize.)

“I’m sorry.” He whispers to the ghost that’s no longer there, but the silence doesn’t thank him. The silence counts; taps and whispers and creaks, as if it can somehow will him closer in or shut him out.

 _“You don’t have to be sorry, Stevie.”_ A voice says, young and old and with calloused palms. He chuckles, because  _of course_ he has to be sorry.  _Of course_ he has to apologize, because this is his doing in the first place. He stumbles forward over the carpet, over a curve created long ago by a rat or a cat doomed to the dark of the House, and collides with a body he hasn’t felt for a long time.

Time is out of place and so are they, because Dad doesn’t get to meet Ellie and he doesn’t get to watch her grow up (neither does he), because time is  _wrong_ and wraps the wrong way arou-  _“But you should go.”_ His father whispers and he shakes his head here too, pressed against his father and his nose buried in his neck.

He smells of sawdust and mold and a hint of blood, because there’s rarely death without blood. Nell hadn’t smelled like anything, nothing more than the hint of something long gone.

He wonders, for a short while, what Mom will smell like and the thought is loud and jagged, and his father pulls away and he can only imagine the tears in those impossibly blue eyes. He presses his eyes closed until he can see the stars and his father puts a cold hand, the scarred one, on his cheek and wipes at something with his thumb.

He doesn’t know if he’s crying. Maybe he is. Maybe his father is just seeing his own ghosts.

“I couldn’t tell them.” He says, stuffs a hand in his pocket and reaches for his father with the other and he wants it to so desperately be real when he grasps air where there’s no heart.

 

Nell said that the Red Room was the stomach of the House. This House doesn’t have a heart, no matter how many times it pretends with his mother’s face and her soothing words.

 

 _“That’s okay.”_ There she is. He doesn’t know how close she is, but he knows she’s getting closer, because the stench of the House follows her, wraps her in a blanket that can’t be removed, tucked into a box and tossed into the darkest corners of the world.

The House smells of home, but it also smells of something rotten and unforgiving and he takes a step back when Mom gets too close. Because it’s not her.

Because it’s her.

He clenches the hand in his pocket tighter, crushes the paper inside it and almost bolts for the door, but he can’t. He doesn’t want to. He has to.

He can’t.

His other hand falls to his side and there are other fingers snaking through them, young and pale and in a blue dress, and he holds them as tight as he dares. Because he can’t leave Nell. Can’t leave Dad.

He can’t leave Abigail.

He can’t leave Mom, even when he has left her behind for over twenty years.

He has to leave the others. But maybe this is better.

 

***

 

_How do you end a story that's barely begun?_

_(Why, you write the ending first.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story is told back to front, so things that might not make sense in earlier chapter might make more sense in later ones (whenever I actually update because I'm stuck in writersblock atm)
> 
> The name Hugh means "heart, mind and spirit", hence the use of heart regarding him.


	2. four walls and a roof

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He turns to the right, leaves footprints in dust left alone for too long and searches, used by now, for the doorknob to his room."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous title: penultimate

He parks his car, turns the ignition and watches the House dance in yellow light. He reaches for the knob from the light to the car, and just as he does, the light floods back.

He should go home. Ellie’s sick and Leigh needs him. He should go home.

He is going home.

He leans against his car, warm fingers meeting cold metal in the night, breathes deeply and wills the fear away. Fear has no place in a house where that’s all it wants.

Mr. Dudley’s dead and so there’s no one to stop anyone from entering. No one wants to enter.

No one but him.

Maybe he doesn’t actually want to.

The lights are gone and all he can see is the flashlight in his hand, one orb of light in a world of darkness.

“It’s just a house.” He whispers, thinks, and pushes the door open with a creak, watching the shadows the light creates in the corners and the statues. He reaches the stairs without a sound, without a movement and without a care.

Nell isn’t watching from the doorway to the parlor.

Dad isn’t watching from the west entrance.

Mom,  _the House_ , isn’t watching from the landing. But  _It_ is always watching.

He turns to the right, leaves footprints in dust left alone for too long and searches, used by now, for the doorknob to his room.

Four visits. He’s never been in there. Only held the knob as if it, somehow, held all the answers left behind by that night, but he never entered, perhaps afraid of whatever memory resides in there.

It looks the same as it did then, empty and alone, one part of many in a house too big. A smile catches his lips when he sees the book left on the nightstand and the slippers by the foot of the bed. Luke’s drawing hangs on the wall, all colored streaks and big blobs, and he tries not to see the ghosts hidden in the woods created behind them.

Something has nipped at the paper, curled its edges inward and made it look more crumbled and older than before. The colors are too dark, and he knows that nothing pure remains in this House.

He’s stopped in the door, hand on the knob and flashlight traveling the length of what once was his, so he doesn’t quite hear what is so obviously there. He turns, sees the creak rather than hears it and lodges his own heart in his throat, because fear belongs in this House. It does not stay long in an abandoned car.

The wheelchair spins past him, slowly, painfully, with molded fingers dangerously close to catching in the pins. It stops, fingers frozen in motion, and a head turns, and black eyes look at him as if he’s nothing more than the help.

He doesn’t move. Neither does the child.

He blinks. The child is gone.

He doesn’t close the door behind him as he moves to the next room, opens its door and closes it when the creak comes back. Theo was always bare when it came to decorations, but he sees the box of papers she left, drawings and writings, collected and saved from trash bags over the course of a few months, now molded and rotten and read only by their own ghosts.

He lifts one, recognizes his own attempt at a bedtime story, and passes by. He stares out the window and sees Mr. Dudley at work, raking a stubborn patch of grass that perhaps should’ve been resown long ago. But it’s winter and the ground is frozen and cold, though the man seems unfazed by it, laughing and stretching as if the sun was high in the sky and existence was being alive.

He sighs and turns, moments before Mr. Dudley turns and raises a hand in greeting, and closes the door before the mold takes hold of his lungs.

His lungs are taken by other things, so it doesn’t matter much.

He leaves Shirley’s room, leaves it alone with its cries of dying kittens and smells of nothing.

He leaves the twins’ room, because he doesn’t want to see her ghost and remember the pain of loss when she won’t show herself as his regrets.

No one watches him when he steps into the kitchen, no one he loves at least, and seats himself by the table, phone lighting the way out. He imagines, because he doesn’t want to remember.

Mrs. Dudley whips past him with a child in her arms and he knows it’s not Abigail. He knows a version of the pain that wafts off of her, seeps into his pores and makes him, for a moment, wonder if this is what being Theo feels like. She doesn’t see him, doesn’t speak to him, and he watches her for a moment; a memory trapped in a dream in a house built on hate and fear.

His heart tugs when the baby cries and Mrs. Dudley’s gone before his next heartbeat presses against his ribs. He pushes away from the table and wipes his nose on his sleeve before he, finally, reaches for the door out.

 _“Thought it was you.”_ The voice startles him on the last step, and he skips in an attempt to save himself. No one had seen him, no one had cared.

Mr. Dudley did both.

“Yeah.” The man laughs, leans on the rake and shrugs his shoulders.  _“Why? There’s no need for that.”_ He scoffs, but Steve knows there’s an undercurrent of understanding in his voice, hidden by the fact the dead seem to find few things funny.

He looks at the house, looks back and is not surprised when Mr. Dudley’s gone and the frost on the ground is untouched by both rake and feet. He stands and stares for a moment, knowing that the House is waiting,  _wanting,_ but he does neither and walk away.

But, a part of him says, that he’ll be back before he has another excuse to travel the wrong way for a job.

And, so, the porchlight flashes twice.


	3. waltz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She’s smiling, dimples in her cheeks and hair cut just below the ear, and he can’t help but smile back, because there are few things as innocent in this House as that child."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter title: antepenultimate

The House is already alight when he parks the car and it stops his heart right there in his chest.

Mr. Dudley had told him about the screams he’d heard a few days prior, when Steve was no more than ten miles away researching another book, but hadn’t been specific about the nature of them. He’d called Leigh barely an hour later and told her he’d take a detour to check it out, but that he’d be home in time for Ellie’s bedtime.

She hadn’t been happy about it, but for once Steve hadn’t cared.

According to Mr. Dudley’s assessment there hadn’t been anything moved, and nothing taken, and no one seemed to have stayed in the House, but neither of them were thinking of the screams as alive.

The House has many things, but it doesn’t have the capability of hiding everything.

There is music audible when he reaches the upper steps, making him stop, pause in thought over whatever could be meeting him on the other side. He is silently praying for someone other than his family, and his prayer seems answered, because when he pushes open the cold door he is faced by the little girl no one had believed to be real.

She’s smiling, dimples in her cheeks and hair cut just below the ear, and he can’t help but smile back, because there are few things as innocent in this House as that child.

She’s holding out a hand, but instead of wanting him to take it she’s pointing to his face.  _“Take them off.”_ He tilts his head in thought, but does as he’s told and folds the glasses into his pocket.  _“You can’t see her as good now.”_ She whispers and he supposes that’s true, but he also can’t see if there’s anyone else but him in the house.

She takes his hand, small fingers around his bigger ones, and leads him further inside, past dancing shadows and piercing music and through a mirage that would never again be real, because it’s just a simple dream of simple times when life was full and the people dancing through him were alive.

The House, still abandoned after so long, is covered in vines and knotted branches of something not quite sane, and he almost stumbles if it hadn’t been for Abigail pushing him away from the leg of the table that snagged his foot and continues down the path to the kitchen.

She stops, suddenly, keeps his hand in hers, and he hears how something shuffles past. How  _someone_ shuffles past.  _“He’s not a nice man.”_ The girl whispers and tugs him forward, and they both stumble over the threshold, and Steve almost bumps his head in the doorway, and stops, watching someone else move about the kitchen.

There’s the sound of a child laughing, and he turns instinctively toward the sound. He knows it’s Mrs. Dudley before she speaks, and he almost smiles because he remembers that she could be kind.

 _“What’s her name?”_ She asks and Abigail leads him to the table. He chooses to stand when the child scurries away to meet her mother halfway, taking wobbling cups from old hands. “Ellie.” The cups stop and he knows they’re looking at him. “After Nell.” He whispers and looks to the floor, even if he can’t see much of it in the dull light and blur of his eyes.

 _“It’s a beautiful name.”_ She replies and he nods and takes a breath, because a part of him is waiting for something different. She sets the cups on the table and he pushes back, as if just now remembering the fate of the girl who brought him there.

“I just came to check on something.” He says and reaches for the wall closest to the door and they don’t reach to stop him, but their eyes bore into his back and he knows they know something else.

“What?” He asks and turns back, wanting so desperately to reach for his glasses and  _see,_ but it’s suddenly colder than before and he jolts backward just as a hand reaches his cheek.

 _“Time to come home.”_ The voice, Mom,  _the House,_ that follows says and there’s a loud bang of pots and pans when he tumbles into them and away. He grips the old sink with panicked breaths, and he knows she’s getting closer, because the lights are flashing, and the smell is back.

One flash, two flash, stop.

One flash, two flash, stop.

“No.” He says and covers his eyes, more out of reassurance than panic, reassurance just to make sure that he can keep her  _(it)_ away.

 _“Please, Steven.”_ She’s begging now, a hand in his hair, and he almost wants to hug her, wipe the tears away and imagine another reality. But he can only ever imagine something different when he knows it’s not real.

This is too real.

Instead, he walks. His instinct is telling him to walk around; his fear tells him to walk straight. When his fear became stronger than his instinct, he doesn’t know, but he doesn’t care much for it.

His mother, the House, disappears in blurry visions of red and black, like smoke from a fire. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the main hall and reaches for nothing where there once was joy and dance, the faint sound of jazz filling his ears where the party has gone to the parlor.

He doesn’t follow it, but he does listen. Albeit to something different.

She’s singing softly, with a childish rhythm to her steps as she dances around him and the broken floor, as if there is nothing wrong with the world. She sings until she sees him and then she stops and takes his hands, because she’s still dancing.

He doesn’t quite know where they dance to, or what the song is, but he soon feels cold wood against his back and there’s a quiet shove.  _“Go.”_

It’s a simple word, but it brings a lump to his throat and when he reaches out, she’s gone. Her voice is dancing in another room, but he doesn’t follow that either.

He knows he’s been here long enough, and that if there ever was anything living in this House, it is long gone, but he doesn’t go quite yet.

“It’s just a house.” He whispers to himself, leans against the wood and breathes, because the House is finally quiet.

 _“It’s just a house.”_ Poppy whispers back.


	4. promises to keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Steve’d give most things to have the Bent-Neck Lady haunt him at night, if only just to have Nell closer than a few states and an entire lifetime. But he knows Nell wouldn’t chose him to haunt if she ever wished to haunt anyone.
> 
> She’d be more likely to send Dad, if anyone at all, to scold him for his behavior and all those goddamn mistakes, but it’s something at least.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter title: preantepenultimate
> 
> Current chapter title from:
> 
> "Whose woods these are I think I know.  
> His house is in the village though;  
> He will not see me stopping here  
> To watch his woods fill up with snow. 
> 
> My little horse must think it queer  
> To stop without a farmhouse near  
> Between the woods and frozen lake  
> The darkest evening of the year. 
> 
> He gives his harness bells a shake  
> To ask if there is some mistake.  
> The only other sound’s the sweep  
> Of easy wind and downy flake. 
> 
> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
> But I have promises to keep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep,  
> And miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost

Ellie’s three years old the second time he visits the House after Dad and Nell and it’s not too late in the day, but it’s evident by the strain in Leigh’s voice, that the little girl has been awake for most of the night and, now nearing the afternoon, the girl doesn’t seem anywhere near sleep.

She babbles excitedly, as only a child can, into her father’s ear, talking about something that sounds like a cat and maybe a mouse and Leigh has to clarify several times that  _Pom_ is actually  _Tom_ and that whatever gibberish she speaks afterwards means  _Jerry_ and he laughs, because he himself had had trouble with words up until he was well into the third grade.

(Even though three-year old’s might have some vocabulary difficulties, at least she’s a little clearer than most three-year old’s Steve have met in his life.)

He doesn’t have a reason for being here and not home, but the excuse has been trained and molded so that Leigh will ask as few questions as possible, but beaten as she is by their daughter’s constant excitement, seems to be enough for her to wish him a safe trip home and hang up the phone when Ellie’s attention drifts from Steve and over to whatever else could be going on at home and she’s too tired to argue with him.

He smiles as he puts it back inside his pocket and it fades a little when he stares up at the House, not a light on except for the one in the window he knows used to be the twins’; alight to scare the Bent-Neck Lady away.

 

(Steve’d give most things to have the Bent-Neck Lady haunt him at night, if only just to have Nell closer than a few states and an entire lifetime. But he knows Nell wouldn’t chose him to haunt if she ever wished to haunt anyone.

She’d be more likely to send Dad, if anyone at all, to scold him for his behavior and all those goddamn mistakes, but it’d be something at least.)

 

He’s out of the car and on the porch before he can think twice about it, and inside before he can think once more, and there’s so much warm light meeting him that he can’t help but smile through the wobbling of his lips.

The House loves stories. And stories are built on memories, so he’d not surprised when little Nell bounces down the stairs in her summer dress, a sweet smile on her face and Luke’s voice shouting not too far behind. She doesn’t see him, doesn’t speak to him, and just bolts past him and out through the doors and into the sunlight that only they can feel, and he finds himself smiling a little, because it used to be so simple.

Nothing’s ever simple anymore. He suspects simple things stopped when he took on the secrets and darkened his heart with the mold that lived in here.

 _“Do you think Abigail can come too?”_ Little Luke asks him, and he turns back, throat suddenly clogged, and he doesn’t trust his voice completely, so he nods and whispers; “of course,” after a short while and the smile on his little brother’s face seems to warm the House even more, as if such things were possible in the building’s own memories.

He’d seen the little girl’s body, obscured by memories, and it seemed like nothing less than a gift to give the girl the privilege of roaming the House as she wished. But it was only his name on the papers; nothing controlled this House. Not even the ghosts themselves.

Luke’s gone in a blink and a hint of smoke, gone in what seems to be the House’s own little mind of what it wants to see, and replaced, further up the stairs, by the little girl whose name no one had believed in.

 

Her eyes had been so wide and her dress so blue and she’d looked so sad when she saw him that first time he visited after Nell and Dad, as if though she knew what he didn’t in those moments before the porchlight flashed twice and his mother smiled, and this seemed naught but a distant dream.

(And perhaps, she did.)

Now, she stands with fingers loose and lips curled in an attempt not to sneer nor smile, and she seems to consider him for a moment before she turns and walks back up the stairs, as if his promise to his brother about her coming with was nothing more than that; a promise.

(He’s always been shit at promises.)

 

His problem these days, after the House and after that second book had blown up, was just that; promises. Promise wasn’t something that the Crains’ should be able to do, but they filled themselves up with it anyway. Before, and After Mom as they’d come to call it sometimes, his problem had been the lies and the harshness of his apologies. He’d changed that, but he’s not quite sure if it was the right thing to change at times.

 _“Are you coming?”_ Little Shirley asks, her book under her arm and eyebrows raised in question and he frowns with his own until she raises the book and walks toward the stairs, edging him forward with the promise of sibling bonding time or whatever Shirley had come to call it.

He does smile then and moves forward and almost reaches the steps before someone seems to call his name and he turns back around, finding nothing there and walking up the steps until he finds that Shirley’s gone too, not so much as a footstep visible in the thick rug of dust.

He stops then and there, the sun painting the sky pink and orange over the trees, and he sees how the window has acquired yet another crack, webbing its way up from the corner and toward the middle and spreading itself into teeny, tiny little splinters, ready to burst it wide and open should the right wind come crashing through.

Maybe, the day it finally shatters, he’ll leave it like that; broken and jagged, because that’s what the House deserves. But he also thinks that he’ll want it changed, even if no one would want to take the job, because there are memories in this House that shouldn’t be disturbed by broken shields.

 

(Shields for whatever remains inside or for whatever remains outside, he’s not quite sure, but he knows that broken windows is just another way to enter.

There shouldn’t be any doors in this House, just to keep out the living, but then the darkness of it would just knock a hole in the wall.)

 

He stares out the window, prepares himself, and turns left, because he remembers something he thought he’d forgotten. He reaches the bedroom where the old lady had died, and he barely flinches when he sees her on the bed, legs propped up and voice whispering the lies and truths of her sister-in-law. He ignores her for a time and searches a drawer, because he knows he hid something in there as a child and he only jumps once when Hazel scolds him for going through her things.

He holds the necklace between two fingers, stares at it, the cross mounted upon it, and turns to look at Mrs. Hill, but she’s gone and replaced with the emptiness of a rotten bed, and he barks a laugh in the quiet, because a ghost afraid of a cross is just absurd.

He doesn’t believe, never has, and he doubts he’ll ever start, but he pockets it anyway and makes for the door, because someone  _somewhere_ might want it. He doesn’t know where the subconscious thought of it came from, and it bothers him a bit, but he walks through the House without a second glance back and makes for his car.

He’s startled once on his way back when the cane taps against the ground and he stops and closes his eyes, because he will never completely leave you alone if you let yourself see.

But William Hill moves on, taps his cane and listens to his sister’s raging upstairs, where Poppy no doubt has started something that will never end.

Steve moves, gets in his car, and goes home, but he doesn’t move on.

Because, how do you move on when something inside you has never been with you at all?


	5. lion's tooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe I am.” He whispers to himself when he looks up at the House from the gate, car left abandoned in the drive, and grips the bars between his fingers. He hasn’t seen the House since Dad and Nell and Mom, but he’s seen it too many times to remember what living the lie without it felt like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments bring me so much life and joy! Thank you so much!
> 
> Previous chapter title: propreantepenultimate
> 
> Current chapter title: dandelion was previously, and most commonly, known as "lion's tooth"

It had been… weird, to say the least.

Most times when he went researching the next book, he would find little, if anything at all, that could confirm to anyone but the delusional ones that a place was haunted by anything other than water damage and rats when the pitter patter of feet seemed so real, or when there simply lived raccoons in the attic that made it sound like someone was knocking.

Most times, he’d set people at ease or just make them plain and simply furious, their belief in an afterlife something he’d never really thought about himself.

But Ms. Thornton, forty-eight and living on her own in the outskirts of a small town with her own little garden out front that stretched all the way to the back, was not like those other times. She was small for her age, glasses neatly placed upon her face and she reminded him very early on of Grandma Mary, or the pictures he’d seen of her in the very least.

She had welcomed him with a smile and a teacup out on the porch, the steps easily overlooking the garden where she grew salads and carrots and something that looked like strawberries, although they were very far away for him to see properly, and she had talked about everything and nothing; as if he was just an old friend who’d come to visit her after a very long time.

Eventually, however, he asked her about the matter of her email and about the child she was so sure she’d see every now and again when she went to collect the mail or simply water the plants. She smiled at him, looking a little sad, and placed the cup on its saucer and back on the table; “I’m not sure what I saw, Mr. Crain.” She said, looking sheepishly down at the tablecloth.

 _‘Neither do I, most of the time.’_ He wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut until she looked up at him again and spoke. “I think she’s my sister.” She said and he tilted his head, because most people he’d seen after that second visit to the House and after the second book had been published had talked at length about how the hauntings they saw were their dead sisters.

Now, he didn’t doubt anyone’s belief in that it  _was_ their sister, but he was growing tired of the consistency that that was simply what  _all_ of them said, saying it in such a way that it didn’t sound anything at all like the truth and more like a simpler retelling of Nell.

“Why do you think that?” He asked, placing his own cup down and picking up his notebook, the recorder already going on the table. Ms. Thornton had been quiet at that, pouted a bit, before she blew a breath that could almost be called nervous.

“Because she looks like her. I think. I don’t remember her so well.” She said and leaned back, as if the breath had taken her strength to remain upright. “Did you live here?” Steve asked, waving his pen around to in a way encapsulate his meaning. “In this house?

She nodded, turning her eyes to the garden, searching, perhaps, for something to make it seem more real than it sounded. “Can you tell me when you first saw her?” He didn’t want to clarify his meaning and it didn’t seem he had to, because Ms. Thornton didn’t look back at him and simply pointed down the path closest to them.

“There. Few weeks back. I was just walking, going to the shed to get the watering can and there she was.” She threw her hand out in a wide fingered motion and waved her arm, making the gesture of appearing out of thin air Steve had seen so many times on his trips.

“I only see her there. Right there on that path, and she looks just like she did when we were younger. Yellow dress and she’s always smiling and waving.” She said and looked back at him, and Steve thinks, for a split second, that the girl sounds a bit like Nell. (But Nell barely smiled at him anymore, even after the fact that she wasn’t there anymore.)

“Can I ask you how it happened?” She furrowed her brows and turned to him, and he cleared his throat and clarified that he wanted to know how she died, if that was alright by her. Ms. Thornton looked away again, locked on the path and then turned back and took a breath through her nose.

“She fell.” Was all she said, and Steve’s insides froze, because the house wasn’t the House and wasn’t two stories and he was a man with the simple idea nowadays that those that died and stayed behind, stayed where they’d gone and strayed only within the minds of those they’d known and loved. “She didn’t die there,” she said and pointed to the path again. “But that’s where she used to pick her flowers.”

“Where did she fall, Ms. Thornton?”

She was silent for a minute, trying to remember or trying to forget, before she flicked her eyes to the part of the house they couldn’t see. “She wanted to dance on the roof, she’d said to Dad, if I remember correctly.” Steve’s face must’ve frozen then too, because he felt like he couldn’t move when she continued speaking, voice low and eyes still staring at the point of the house the roof of the porch hid from them.

“I guess she did. I wasn’t home.” Her eyes had turned glassy and Steve waited, letting the recording tick away the seconds. “I came home from school and Mom was just  _screaming._ ”

(Dad had screamed too, when Mom had fallen.)

“How old was she?” He asked, scribbling notes about their surroundings into his notebook. “Five,” Ms. Thornton breathed, and Steve’s head snapped up and caught her looking at something else, and when he turned, he saw her too. “She was five, Mr. Crain.”

She didn’t sound surprised or even scared, but Steve had a feeling that few people were scared when the hauntings they saw were children barely over the age where they start to speak clearer. Horror movies might want to prove some people wrong, but most horror writers hadn’t met those ghosts.

She was small, with such a thin frame that it almost looked like the dress would fall off her shoulders at any moment, and her hair was pitch black. She didn’t look anything like Nell, like he’d somehow imagined she would, with her dark skin and wide brown eyes. She wore a gap-toothed smile and her dress was the color of sunflowers, such a stark difference to the color that haunted Steve’s dreams.

She didn’t look dead, but then again, few ghosts did, but there was something cold about her that made it so very clear that she wasn’t actually there.

He didn’t know why he did it, but he closed the book and put it on the table and raised to his feet, palms open and inviting. Ms. Thornton stared and started to sputter half sentences while he walked, but stopped as soon as he’d reached the last step and the girl hadn’t disappeared yet.

“I’m Steve.” He said and stopped on the gravel, looking at her where she stood on the grass. He left it alone, afraid that one step too close and she too would be gone. Her eyes followed him, and she kept smiling until he was as close as he dared, and then it was her turn. Three steps. That was all she took.

It was all they needed.

 _“I’m Rachel.”_ She said, her voice sounding so much like Allie’s had when she’d been younger, and Steve couldn’t help but smile back at her. “It’s very nice to meet you, Rachel. What are you doing here?”

She frowned at him and looked back to the house, where Ms. Thornton sat and listened with bated breath. _“I live here.”_

“Of course you do, silly me. Your sister told me that.” He looked at her and she looked back, and he almost felt a little like they both knew that that wasn’t what he’d asked.

“ _Why_ are you here, Rachel?”

There was a flower in her hair, a blooming dandelion, and she picked it out and studied its petals absentmindedly.  _“I wanted to go home. So, I did.”_ Was her reply and it damn near broke his heart to hear her like that, but he stayed still and quiet and listened as Ms. Thornton edged her way off the steps.

Rachel frowned as she got closed, the dandelion almost gone, and looked at her with a tilted head.  _“Why are you so old?”_

Ms. Thornton laughed, and it sounded like it was on the verge of tears and she almost seemed to reach out before Rachel backed away and stared at her, her eyes blown wide.  _“Minnie, why are you so old?”_

“Because it’s been a long time, Rachel.”

 _“But I’m not old.”_ There were only a few petals left and Steve almost felt like their time was almost up as well. “Do you know why you’re here, Rachel? Is it just because you wanted to go home?” Steve asked, and watched as the petals danced down to the grass. Rachel looked up at him, sharing her sister’s pout, and then she shook her head. The she turned and stared up at the white porch with the little teacups and the blue painted door, and some part of Steve knew that this was the Thorntons’ own version of Hill House; different, yet the same, and with a little girl running around in the middle.

Steve was a writer. A storyteller. A descendant in the art of telling stories around a campfire. He knew nothing about expelling ghosts from houses and he knew nothing about getting them out of your own head.

 _“Are you like me?”_ The little girl asked, the flower now nothing but buds and stems, and Steve thought for a moment before shaking his head, because maybe he _was_ like her.

(Dad’s words were still ringing clear as bells in his ears and he remembered the way Nell had looked at him, all sad and grieving, and maybe, just maybe, he was a bit more like them than he dared to admit.)

 _“I think you are.”_ The girl said with a smile that spoke of nothing and Ms. Thornton reached out a hand to her little sister. Rachel smiled, took her hand, and then she was gone; there was no trace of yellow petals or small, bare feet in freshly cut grass.

 

“Maybe I am.” Steve’d whispered to himself, later in his car when he’d said goodbye to Ms. Thornton and encouraged her to send him as much information as she could and wanted, so that maybe he could find it a worthy place in the next book.

 

“Maybe I am.” He whispers to himself when he looks up at the House from the gate, car left abandoned in the drive, and grips the bars between his fingers. He hasn’t seen the House since Dad and Nell and Mom, but he’s seen it too many times to remember what living the lie without it felt like.

He hears the dogs before he sees them, hackles raised and eyes blinking in the dark as they bark at him, daring him to come closer. He looks to them, not quite at them, and sees the way they looked like when they died. It’s a gruesome sight, a horrible one, but he keeps looking as the biggest one shakes its head, collar glinting in the dull lights, and spatters blood in the grass. He’s never been very fond of dogs.

He looks at the dogs and he can hear Mrs. Hill, voice old and angry, from the room that used to be hers, and the dogs bark even louder, because Steve doesn’t think that anyone’s ever hated someone else more than Hazel hated those dogs and then Poppy. (He’d read it in old books made up of gossip and heard it from the whispering, strained and old voices of the two Mrs. Hills and the chokings of little children, so it was neither truth nor lie.)

Rachel Thornton stirred something up in him and he enters the House before the dogs can fully decide to run him off the grounds, and he doesn’t stop until he reaches the hallway with their rooms, so many memories and horrors encompassed in one single part.

(The whole House is a horror show, but nothing quite grasps all the levels like the hallway.)

He remembers being a kid, running up and down these halls with books and pens and screaming siblings, and he remembers running through it one last time. He’s not quite sure if he’s been running here more than in his dreams or if the House has just used his memories of the place, waking him up in the nights with aching limbs and a tired mind.

The doorknob to his room is in his hand, but this is not the place he wishes to see, to remember, so he leaves it there, seal unbroken, and walks the steps to where three of them decided to end their lives.

 _Decided_ is perhaps the wrong term, it  _is_ the wrong term, but Steve thinks it anyway and wraps his fingers around the railing and lets the cold sink in. He’s not alone, he knows, so he turns and sees Dad’s sad smile, the same as before, and he feels himself smile just as sad.

 _“You should be with Leigh.”_ He whispers and Steve nods, because he shouldn’t be here right now. He’s quiet for a moment and just looks at Dad, all young and blue eyed and with a red tie.

(Dad barely ever wore red.)

“I-,” he begins, stops, because he sees the little blonde girl from all those years ago pass by behind Dad, eyes set on the Red Room. “I guess I’m just scared.” He says once the girl is out of sight and Dad sighs, but doesn’t stop smiling.

 _“That’s okay, Stevie.”_ He says and Steve feels like he might just cry, the first time since Leigh tested positive and threw them all a party. These are not happy tears, however, but they’re damn near close.

“I miss you, Dad.”

_“I miss you too.”_

***

It’s different in the night.

He’d heard Mrs. Dudley say it to Mom when he’d come looking for her and the paint she’d promised, frozen in the doorway when he’d heard Mom.

He didn’t understand what she’d meant back then, but he supposes that he does now.

He’d always thought of the House as big and ugly and old, but when he came back that second time, eyes locked with Dad’s and that ghost breathing against his cheek, Steve knew exactly what Mrs. Dudley had talked about.

Everything’s different in the night.

The hallways, the stairs, the statues, the memories. The House creates new paths for them, new narratives and it jumbles their memories sometimes. He’d felt it when he’d tried writing the book and hadn’t quite known how to close it up.

They didn’t remember it the same.

No one ever does.

But he remember thinking about it a bit like Dracula’s castle when they’d parked up front the first time, the sun high in the sky and their car filled with anticipation and a feeling he couldn’t quite name back then.

Had he been older than, and not twelve, he’d have named it dread.

And maybe the House felt that.

They called it haunted.  _Steve,_ the denier, had called it haunted. And yet the House had never seemed to haunt him as much as the rest.

Dad changed that when he gave the House to Steve, wrapped his fingers around the key to their secrets, and swallowed a handful of pills to fulfill a promise to a creature that could never be satisfied.

 _Dad_ didn’t haunt him.  _Nell_ didn’t haunt him.  _Mom_ didn’t haunt him. The House did. And it took the shape of whoever had set foot in the House since its creation to its fruitless demise in flames.

The first time was hopeful, excited and so damn terrifying that neither of them had been able to give it a name.

The second time was melancholic, rushed and so goddamn horrifying that it was a wonder neither of them, except for Luke, had gone to a goddamn therapist.

Steve wasn’t quite sure when it changed. When the House decided to change its appearance toward; create a sword sharp enough to break down the wall he’d built and created his life upon. Maybe it was that second time, when everything was his to keep.

Or maybe it was that last time, when Nell counted and everything he saw was black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're on the homestretch, guys!
> 
> A two-part prologue/epilogue is currently in the works, so we'll see how this turns out!


	6. we have always lived in the castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The voice lists names.
> 
> Dates.
> 
> Memories. (I miss you.)
> 
> Promises. (I love you.)
> 
> (I’m gone.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter title: adagio part II
> 
> Current chapter title from: We have Always lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson

_"Come home.”_

The voice is quiet, calm and a little sad, but it doesn’t matter much how quiet it is; it echoes and morphs into something akin to a scream, loud and brash in a space not designed for joy.

The voice trails over broken floorboards - bent up and rendered black in everlasting night and deadly mold - and travels the sights of a single broken window, filtering reaching fingers of moonlight through an eerie sight. The voice stops, pauses, when something moves, then starts again, as if any movement brings it a little more life and a little more joy, even when the things it hears and sees are no more real than its owner.

The voice lists names. 

Dates.

Memories.  _(I miss you.)_

Promises.  _(I love you.)_

_(I’m gone.)_

The rug in the parlor is bent and eaten by rats and mold, strings of fabric holding something perhaps sane together, but there are few things sane in such a House.

It creaks. It taps. It counts. It eats. It’s alive just as much as it’s not, the sound of it creating a vacuum where life should be. But nothing lives in this House.

Nothing can.

Someone had once walked these halls, clutched their hands and held their breaths, counted their own steps and said;  _“God died here.”_

That is not altogether true, nor is it a lie; God didn’t die here. God was never here.

A dog barks outside the window, loud and angry, and another voice calls, yells, from a room down the hall, old voice breaking silence. There’s a tapping in the wall; loud, violent, desperate and then wood and metal creaks together, snaps something between themselves, and then there’s just a cry -- the sound of snapping bones and angry red filling what follows.

Something -- someone -- chokes and cries and someone else rocks back and forth, hugs and comforts with the inability to take away.

The Hills’ were good with pain and hate. They were less good at other things. (The House stands testament to that.)

It’s the hour of the wolf, the time between living and dying where things are the most vulnerable, and so no one should be too surprised when there are more creaks, the smells of death and fire and burnings of both flesh and wood and then the simple screams of those who has lost.

Someone falls. Someone dies.

How many have lost their lives? Not even the House knows.

It only knows it wants more.

The moon falls from the sky, its constant companion, no less beautiful to those who remain, but nonetheless frightening to those that have left. The sun goes up, burns away the memories, and welcomes the new that will be made.

And it will. Eventually.

Such as today.

There are no more ropes hanging from the spiral staircase, but there still looms ominous shadows over those who have wandered the floors alive, unaware of the tragedies that happened so long ago in something so old.

There stands a piano in a room that does not exist; keys pressed down and playing something so sad and melancholy that those that stay may call it joyous, when it is anything but. So many have tried to open it, few have succeeded, and those who have; well, let’s just say that good things come to those that wait.

Rush the House. See what happens.

He is not the first to die.

Those that once loved him are gone; buried somewhere else and nowhere close, and he finds joy in that. Joy in the knowledge that those he knew are gone and not with him; gone from him and the grasps of the House, but close enough that the House may take its memories of them and make them seem alive once again.

He’s not the last to die. But he is the last to die here.

(For now.)

He lives in his own memories; the House’s memories. He lives in them, takes joy in them, and finds little meaning in the things turned red in the absence of his awareness.

A red robe. A red tie. A red shirt. Red lips. Red shoes.

A red cake.

He knew joy for time he was alive, and he knows it now; in death, things become that much clearer.

A part of the House had crumbled. The east wing, to be exact. It had curled in on itself, as if starved and he had smiled then, wandered the rubble and imagined things only he could.

It had crumbled more and more, and then it stopped; now it simply creaked and ached, hunger turning itself inside an inanimate thing and making it lash out at the things that kept it alive.

He didn’t love the House. How could he? But he cared for it, nonetheless. He cared for it with his mother’s sweet voice, his father’s beating heart and his sister’s gentle smiles and his own little mind; creating twists and turns that kept the House’s own mind docile enough for care.

But good things don’t last. They never do.

So when he hid in plain sight, so many years after, and stared after the person he thought he’d never see as they wandered the rotten halls and smooth stones, he felt how the House itself tried to reach out and eat.

But it cannot eat that which doesn’t exist.

They leave soon enough, and then there are so many more people there; alive and breathing and annoying. They tear and fix, throws that carpet away and hides the mold that can’t be purged, and they fill the House with warmth.

He throws up, though no one can see it, and it creates a void between himself and the world; the living are far too fast paced for him to catch up.

He does present himself, eventually, when the people have all but left and the only ones that remain are him and the groundskeeper; the only ones that have chosen to be seen by those that are still there.

He presents himself, lets himself be real, and they leave it at that.

The dead dance in the halls, laughs in the rooms and read aloud in the garden -- barking dogs and angry crones and murderous mothers and lonely children -- until someone parks a car, gets out and beams as if though the sun was his.

It sinks his heart, had it still existed, and fills him with lead, but he plasters something that looks like a smile on his face, steps out on the porch  _(once, twice, stop.)_  and greets them with a warm hand and the promise of joy.

Joy does not exist here; he wants to say. He doesn’t, but he wishes he could.

He greets the father, smiles wide, and says;

_“I’m Steven.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing's been edited so many times I don't even know what the original was like, but here it is! Also, it is not beta'd and was written in like an hour and then edited (like 1000 times) and now it's in front of you.
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	7. remember, remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (But this is a light that only they can see;
> 
> “The Crazy Crains’”.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the tags before reading this!
> 
> I did it.
> 
> I actually finished something multi-chapter.
> 
> (Also, I might've done a bad. Please forgive me.)
> 
> Previous chapter title: adagio part I
> 
> Current chapter title from: 
> 
> "Remember remember the fifth of November  
> Gunpowder, treason and plot.  
> I see no reason why gunpowder, treason  
> Should ever be forgot..."

“You’re an idiot, Steve.”

He’s mumbling to himself and his sobs tears the words apart and makes him question, for a moment, what the fuck it was that he did.

He knows what he did.

He’s just not sure  _what he did._

“You were so brave, sweetie.” A voice says and he flinches and turns, because  _why the fuck_ did he do that. He mumbles his denial to himself  _(no, no, no, nononononono)_ and he presses his hands to his head, covers his ears as if he can make her shut up that way, but she’s in his head and so it’s no  _fucking_  use.

Nellie stands further away, palms open and upturned, ready for him if he falls, but she’s been here a while. She knows what he feels. She knows what he did.

He doesn’t know what he did.

He doesn’t  _know_ what he did.

(He doesn’t.)

He runs from Mom and something tears in his chest, and he feels a little like he leaves his heart behind and maybe he does, because he now can’t feel it anymore. It’s not jumping through his chest, doesn’t want to escape, doesn’t beat steadily and numbly against its cage;  _it’s not fucking there anymore._

He can’t feel anything, he thinks when he tears up the stairs and out of his mother’s,  _the House’s,_ sight and he wants to scream but his voice is swallowed up by the dark and the cold and the lump in his throat.

He doesn’t stop until he reaches the hallway furthest away from the Red Room, where the windows shattered that night, and sinks to the floor, hands finding his head again and breath coming short and curt from his throat, and calming down doesn’t seem necessary, because  _breath_ is something he doesn’t  _have._

Not anymore.

“Steve.” A voice says, doesn’t ask, and he snaps his eyes up to his sister and she’s crouched to his level with tears in her eyes and a calm storm in her voice and he feels so _fucking guilty._

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, whispers again ( _i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry)_ and again (sosorrysosorrysosorry), and she doesn’t accept it or acknowledge it, because she really shouldn’t, and it breaks the heart he left behind. He left his heart with Mom and the House, and now there’s nothing left for him to take back.

Not even an apology.

“I told you to go.” She says, doesn’t scold, and he nods. He knows what he did.

He just doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know,” He whispers and leans his forehead against his knees and hugs them tightly, as if though he can just make this seem anything but real. “I don’t know why I did it, Nellie.”

“It was the House.” She says and he shakes his head. “It was me, Nell. It was me. Just me.” He mumbles, eyes pressed closed. There’s rustling of fabric and he knows she shakes her head too, because he knows that much about his sister.

“It’s always been the House, Steve. You and It. Me and It.” She pauses and moves, sits down beside him and hugs her knees tightly too, dressed in her nightgown and the locket around her neck. In another light, there’d be a noose.

In another light, there’d be blood.

In another light, there’d be lead and smoke and so much blackness.

 

(But this is a light that only they can see;

 _“The Crazy Crains’”_.)

 

“Mom and It.” He says and leans back, shoulder brushing Nell’s, and she nods. They tell it in the wrong order and leave one out, because the House only agreed.

It didn’t take. It only agreed to a demand a desperate man gave.

“What happens now?” He asks, leaving it short of a question, and he feels Nell shrug. “You know them.” She says and he nods, because he supposes that he does know them.

“Do you remember that song Mom used to sing?” Nell asks and he smiles, wipes his nose on his sleeve and looks to her. He nods. “Yeah. Queen, was it?” He asks and Nell smiles now, small and fond, because thinking of other things makes this all easier.

(He’s still gone, replaced by something without a heart, but he’s still himself.)

The song, however pretty and melancholy it is, fits them a little too well. Nell and Arthur. Steve and Leigh. Mom and Dad.

They’re ghosts, memories, wishes of people with broken hearts and shattered trust. It’s alright, in ways that it shouldn’t be, and Steve almost forgives himself when he really knows he shouldn’t.

He can’t tell how much time has passed when doors slam open and someone screams, and his eyes are locked with Nell and she grabs his hands when he tries to turn away, shout back to the voice by the staircase that’s now begging and pleading and  _wanting._ She mouths the lyrics, plays the tune in her head, as if though she’s afraid that if she sings them aloud, Luke will hear them and then he’ll never leave.

Luke has to go. Peter too.

They can’t, so they sing in silence and Steve closes his eyes and presses their intertwined fingers to his forehead, in prayer or thought or memory he doesn’t know, but he does it and wishes he didn’t have to think.

“It won’t be okay, Steve.” She says and he nods, because of course it’s not going to. It’s never going to be.

“What did you see?” She asks and he looks up, frowning when he tries to speak and keep from screaming for Luke to leave; to find him;

_To leave._

He knows what she means, and he mouths the words, lets the motions leave his lips without a sound, afraid that what he remembers is something not quite sane and something far too doomed.

He saw himself, in a second’s flash of everything. Every moment he’s shared with this House; all the memories he left behind and all the memories he created outside.

 

(The House doesn’t know Ellie, never will, but it still knows her face.)

 

He kissed Ellie’s forehead and then Leigh’s cheek, the two tucked away safely in a house that wasn’t this; he called for himself to stop on the stairs, to not follow little Shirley up them and toward the soon-to-be shattered window; he saw himself tell Abigail the stories she later told her older sister, swaddled against their mother’s chest and with bright eyes that never belong to those who grow old.

“Shirley.” He says and Nell looks at him, still so sad, and nods. Because Shirley knows how to see now, and he wishes that she hadn’t had to learn, and he knows he stood in the Room and that she  _saw._ “Theo. Luke.” He whispers the last name, afraid that the House will carry his words away and then it’s too late, because the House didn’t bring the words to Luke, but brought  _him_ to  _Luke._

“Shit.” He curses himself, this thing the House creates still something that most likely can’t be taught completely, and he takes a breath and looks at his brother and knows that Nell isn’t far behind.

Peter looks ready to pass out and so does Luke, but Luke is more ready to burst into tears, but then he’d never leave.

“What the  _fuck,_ Steve.” It’s not a question and Steve doesn’t reply, because he has every right to be angry. “Go.” Is all he says and almost turns, but then his eyes catches on himself and he almost throws up, if such a thing were still possible.

He looks broken. Pale (dead). Maybe because he is all those things, or because the writer in him wants to paint a different picture. It’s not a picture that anyone should have to write down, let alone see, but he does it anyway, because he’s stubborn like that.

“ _Why,_ Steve.” He says, slowly this time, as if he can make Steve see reason just so that he can have an explanation for Leigh and Ellie and Theo and Shirley. But Steve just spreads his arms and shrugs, because how the fuck was he supposed to explain this.

“I don’t know, Luke. I don’t.” He lowers his arms again and moves away, toward the staircase with his brother in his sights, because he can’t bear to turn his back and feel those eyes burn holes in him.

“I don’t know what I did.” He whispers and looks someplace else, because Luke looks so much younger and looks in so much more pain than he did after Dad and Nell, when he’d woken up in the hospital and beamed like the moon, not bright but not dull; “we beat it.” falling on deaf ears. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t.

 

(Steve didn’t.

Or maybe he did?)

 

“But you need to go.” He says, reaches the steps and tries not to cry. He fails, of course he does, and Luke shakes his head and wipes his own. “Not without you.”

“I can’t, Luke.” He says, and even though he hasn’t tried he knows he can’t, because something in the House is pulling him down and strands him there, grounds him where he can’t move further than what the House owns.

And for a House that has owned their whole lives, it sure doesn’t own much.

“Nellie can.” Luke says, stubborn as always and Steve breathes heavily; “I’m not Nell. I can’t.”

“Shirley saw you.” Steve lets a small smile slip past the broken facade; “Tell her I’m sorry. Theo too.” He whispers and wishes to leave it at that.

But he’s a Crain. Their wishes never come true.

Luke just shakes his head and Peter grips his shoulder to keep him from throwing himself over his brother, throttle him to the ground and force him to come back. “I’m guessing you saw something too.” He says and shoves his hands deep down in his pockets. There’s no paper note there anymore.

“Not  _this._ ” Luke throws an arm about and Steve nods and looks away, because  _he can’t do this anymore._

As if sensing something, Nell steps out and Steve wonders idly where Dad is, but he doesn’t ask the man if he’s there anymore. He’s somewhere not quite here.

“Why didn’t you stop this?” He asks this time, a proper question, and Nell shakes her head too and takes his hand, opens it where it’s closed into a fist and grips it tightly.

“Don’t come back. Go.” She says and pushes his hand to his own chest, wanting him to stumble and Steve wonders if perhaps he should go. And he does, without meaning to, disappear into the folds of the House, in search of memories or dreams or maybe both, while Luke calls after him again and Nellie begs him to leave.

He feels the House tug at his mind and want him to see, but he was born of a stubborn nature, so all the House allows him to see is the hatred for that little boy with the too big glasses when he’d tried to burn it to the ground, as if anything it says to Steve matters in his opinion on subjects such as these.

Reason does not exists in a House such as this, he thinks, where the walls remains upright and the bricks meet neatly and the doors shuts sensibly as they should in every house, and where there’s not one thing in a House such as this that walks alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find my [Tumblr](http://mathildahilda.tumblr.com) here if you ever feel the need to talk about anything or just want to scream at me for writing this thing.
> 
> In an earlier draft of this the song Nell and Steve sing is "Love of My Life" by Queen, but I couldn't fit the lyrics into the part once I rewrote it, so sorry about any confusion.
> 
> Thank you so much for staying with me on this ride and for all your lovely comments!


End file.
